Tag Archives: fertilitytreatments

Once again Thank You Justine Brooks for an amazing article and hitting me in all the right places…

We all have enough and everythings in our lives. Example: I have had enough of treating my body like crap, so I am going to start working out. I have done everything I can to mend my relationship with this person. Infertility or not, we all must define our own enoughs and everythings.

Have you done everything you can? Have you done everything you need to?

Have you done enough? Have you lost enough? Have you suffered enough?

Justine says “that by defining my everythings and enoughsit will help me to let go, embrace and move forward with my life. We can apply these questions to many areas of our lives that we are struggling with. Infertility. Recovery. Relationships. Dreams. This list goes on and on. We all must remember that only we can define what is everything and when enough is enough. When we define these through others’ expectations or society or because it is “what we are supposed to do” it only comes from this place of shame; a place of not honoring ourselves. Our everythings and our enoughs can, and need to, only be defined within ourselves.”

So that is where I am at now. Hubs and I are taking a year to figure out what our everything and enough is. At the moment I do feel like I have reached my enough, although I do not feel like I have done everything I can in my fertility journey. I am sure my enoughs and everythings will change in the coming months. I hope that by meditating, praying, researching, relaxing, and evaluating my soul I will be one step closer to figuring what those are so I can lead a happy and healthy life.

“Only we define our enough and everything. And, our ever upward. To let go of comparison, especially in our sufferings and recovery, is to find our truth. Because we all suffer. We all lose. Hard is just hard. And, we all must practice our recovery. Trust in your truth. Trust in your everything. Trust in your enough. Because, within that trust you will be found.”

This month is our second cycle/last cycle of IUI in conjunction with using injectable medication. We did IUI last month with injectables and were unsuccessful. {I won’t rehash that experience since you will get the jist of it in my next post}. I am going to get into some med talk real quick so you will know what I am referring to in my subsequent posts. So bare with me:

For those of you unfamiliar with infertility talk IUI stands for Intrauterine Insemination. This is when they take your mandangos spooge and clean em up, spin em around, and separate the good from the bad. Then they take that clean, amazing liquid gold {77 million to be exact- in our case} and insert it past your cervix straight into your uterus using a syringe and catheter. This helps bypass any hostel va-jaja and makes it so the sperm doesn’t have to swim as far. Their adventure begins a lot sooner. {all really exciting stuff. I know.}

Injectable medications- in my case- consists of hormones such as Gonal-F and Menupour {75 iu}. These drugs help stimulate a strong ovulation, produce multiple mature eggs, and helps stimulate healthy estrogen production. Like I said before, I don’t have issues with any of these things- or so we think- but the meds can help juice things up. We decided to be aggressive with our treatment since we had tried other oral medications such as Fermera and Clomid with no luck. Our doctor also recommended doing injections because statistically the rate of pregnancy is a lot higher. With that said rates of multiples are a lot higher as well, 30% chance of multiples. Bring it on baby.

In conjunction with using these meds I also do what is called a “Trigger” shot. This is a medication called Ovidril which causes your body to release all your mature eggs instead of the largest of the eggs, usually just one. In a normal cycle your body will only release one mature egg- maybe two, which is how you get fraternal twins. When you do a trigger shot it forces your body to release all your mature eggs and gives you a better chance of conceiving. With that said, you have to be careful here- injectable medications can cause you to over stimulate, causing you produce too many mature eggs that are being released. BOOM this is how you become Octomom or John and Kate Plus 8. Not fun. Your doctor should be monitoring you very closely so that this doesn’t happen. Usually they will have to cancel your cycle if you overstimulate. A good number of eggs to have is between 2-4.

Keep in mind IUI doesn’t increase your chances of getting pregnant that much. In a normal cycle you only have about a 20% chance of conceiving. IUI ups that about 5%. Injectables up it by 19%. It is a gamble. It is also said that if IUI doesn’t work for you after 3 cycles, it probably won’t work and you should consider moving on to another form of treatment.

IUI with injectables is also very $$$. I was extremely lucky to have a friend who had just gone through IVF. She became pregnant and had unused medication that she gifted me. YES you can do this with fertility medications. If you are interested in doing any kind of medication for fertility I would check with your doctor and ask about using someone else’s unused meds {not talking dirty needles here}. If it wasn’t for my friend Jen I don’t think we would have been able to afford two cycles of IUI. Also, without the support of my parents we would not have been able to continue with our treatments. So thank you to everyone who has helped us 🙂 It is our personal decision that we are only doing two cycles of IUI. I have done research and I believe that if it doesn’t work this time then it wasn’t meant to be. We have talked about other options such as IVF if this door closes. So please pray, send good vibes, do whatever it is that you do that this month is our month!!